I made a starter yesterday with 32 oz of water to just shy of one cup of DME and picthed the yeast-Wyeast Scottish ale- at 11 pm last night, at 8.30 this morning I have very minimal activity. Very minimal means almost no pretty foam on the top and almost a centimeter of sediment on the bottom. Is this normal for 9.5 hours or should I be worried. I was not worrying and homebrewing it all night but the starter apparently doesn't care. Pitched 80 deg. yeast into 80 deg wort. Help please. Thanks.

Ok, so now I've boiled up some more DME and cooled it and pitched (12 o'clock today) and it sedimented within 2 hours. It's around 80 deg. in there and while there are bubbles coming up through the wort they are not forming a foam on the top and the airlock is bubbling perhaps once a minute. I had wanted to brew today but that doesn't look like a good (possible) idea. Is this, a lost cause/overreaction/bad but saveable/within yeast norms. I just have trouble beleiving that although I saw no huge head and not lots of activity that now it is just sitting on the bottom sleeping and all that within a few hours. Is it still possible that it will go out of sedimentation and start jumping around again? Also, how do I know if a starter is contaminated, so I don't throw it into a whole batch and ruin that? I need a lower stress hobby.

You don't need a lower stress hobby...just relax. As long as you followed good sanitation practices when making your starter, it'll be fine.

I've had starters throw up a huge head, and others that didn't. It just depends on the yeast strain. If you're in doubt, look at the bottom of the starter. If there's more yeast in there than what you put in, the starter worked.

There is no such thing as a lower stress hobby, just a lower stress approach. Don't worry about it, I am sure your beer will turn out fine. If not, you have a perfect excuse to brew again. Make sure that you don't drive the fun out of brewing with technical details. I see that a lot in this forum. Leave the worrying for the professional brewers whose jobs depend on good beer. Good Luck.